The experts say, every child needs their mother’s love and their father’s approval. Parents do the best they can with what they have to work with but none does it perfectly. So, we grow to adults with our tanks partially filled and expect a spouse will be able to do for us what both parents could not do. We are left unfulfilled and disappointed again.

We pursue other paths to fill the void in our lives. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes came to see, it is like chasing the wind. Nothing out there gives us what we need.

It hit me the other day, thinking about mom’s love and dad’s approval, that God created man and woman in His own image. It takes both the male and female traits to capture what God is like. In the NT, the apostle Paul says to the Thessalonian Church, I was like a mother among you nurturing and I was like a father encouraging you to your best. The lights went on! Parents, spouses and other pursuits are only meant to whet our appetites so we would be hungry for the main meal. Parents are a faint reflection of our heavenly Father who has perfectly mastered the ability to love us and give us His approval.

Other’s create an appetite in us by their inability to meet those needs in us perfectly. We flit from one person to another hoping someone else may have the elusive nectar. Everyone will ultimately come up short. None of us have an unlimited reservoir to dispense to others. Our reservoirs are also half full.

“Come to Me,” Jesus said, all of you who are tired of running everywhere else, “I WILL give you rest for your souls.” He will also give you the only source of unconditional love and acceptance that is unlimited.

All our disappointment, dissatisfaction and frustration with people is simply His calling card, “Come to Me.”

Blessings,

Scott